Renee Kane, who had decided to strike first before Spinning Top could get stronger, had no idea that Spinning Top had the exact same plan.
In his eyes, the current "Miss Black Tights" was just as arrogant, conceited, and stupid as ever.
'Yep, that's Leon Lynn, alright.'
Her going offline in the afternoon might have had something to do with her spatial storage or items, but it didn't affect his plan.
Spinning Top licked his lips, which were covered in layers of scorched skin. Thinking of his current predicament, his gaze turned sinister. 'It's time to add some fuel to the fire, force Leon Lynn to make a move...'
*
Renee Kane had a wonderful sleep under her blanket with the air conditioner running.
When she woke up, she felt completely refreshed, and her Physical Strength bar was full.
She checked for new messages in the chat hall while eating bacon, fried eggs, and toast.
There was nothing new of interest, just a lot of people complaining about why it was still so hot at one or two in the morning that they couldn't sleep at all.
There were also some late-night emo posts, with people crying about wanting to go home, feeling like there was no hope left in living.
A few scattered people mentioned that the magma activity seemed to be increasing. They'd even heard some strange noises in the middle of the night and were worried about a potential volcanic eruption and so on.
But whether it was because they didn't take it seriously or because they didn't want to consider such a despairing possibility, these messages were tacitly ignored by everyone.
Renee Kane made no comment on the matter.
In her past life, she had also heard some strange noises and had brought it up in the chat hall.
On one hand, having just entered the instance, she wasn't as cold-blooded as she would later become. On the other, she hoped that if everyone took it seriously, they might come up with some way to escape.
After all, humanity has always been insignificant in the face of natural disasters.
But at first, no one paid her any attention. Later, after her message had been buried under a ton of new ones, a bunch of people inexplicably dug it up just to attack her.
Even though several people had mentioned the magma activity, they singled her out, cursing at her, saying she was deliberately causing a panic, must have an ulterior motive, and that they would find her, and so on.
It got to the point where Renee Kane didn't dare say anything more.
Later, she found out that Vincent Sherman had a hand in all of this.
She never used to understand why Vincent Sherman hated her so much. It was only after her rebirth that Renee Kane suddenly understood—perhaps what she had perceived as years of family harmony, Vincent Sherman had seen as a time of enduring humiliation and biding his time for revenge.
That was why, after their roles were completely reversed, he had been so eager to crush Renee Kane into the mud, to watch her struggle in pain with no hope of escape.
But since the man was long dead, what he had actually thought no longer mattered.
After finishing the last sip of her freshly ground coffee, Renee Kane used her Miss Black Tights account to list fifty bottles of instant coffee, pricing each at 25 Life Value.
At first, everyone scoffed at it. After all, who would spend so much Life Value on a bottle of instant coffee? That was enough to trade for a full breakfast of ordinary food.
As a result, half an hour passed before even a single bottle was sold.
But then, something strange happened. Not even thirty seconds after that one bottle sold, the remaining forty-nine were completely sold out within two minutes!
Renee Kane was a bit baffled when she saw her Life Value suddenly jump to 7250. 'What's going on?'
It wasn't until she opened the chat hall again that she figured out what had happened.
The person who had bought the most coffee from her had posted a message on the public channel: "HOLY SHIT! This coffee restores Physical Strength!!"
In the game, Physical Strength supported all of the players' activities, acting somewhat like a stamina bar.
The lower a player's Physical Strength, the more fatigued they became, and the slower their movements would naturally be.
If their Physical Strength dropped to a certain level, they would even "automatically shut down"—in an instance like this, suddenly fainting could mean never waking up again.
And besides using in-game Energy Potions to recover Physical Strength, the only other way was to sleep.
But that was precisely the problem.
Because it was so hot, forget high-quality sleep; just getting a solid two hours was a luxury. Naturally, they couldn't achieve the effect of fully restoring their Physical Strength with a single night's rest.
But Energy Potions were incredibly rare. Even if someone was lucky enough to find one, it would almost never make it onto the market.
So when the news broke that the coffee Renee Kane was selling could restore Physical Strength, it was only natural that a crowd of people would scramble to buy it.
Once Renee Kane understood what had happened, she slapped her thigh in frustration. 'Coffee that restores Physical Strength for only 25 Life Value? Isn't that a massive loss?!'
She couldn't be blamed for not being more careful.
After all, in her previous life, Renee Kane had never had coffee after entering the game. And in this life, because she had slept so well yesterday, her Physical Strength was full, so she naturally hadn't discovered the coffee's effect...
She could only console herself by thinking of it as a charity donation... No, the more she thought about it, the more her heart ached.
Meanwhile, the entire chat hall was buzzing with excitement over the news that "coffee can restore Physical Strength."
It was revealed that a whole bottle of instant coffee only restored 2 points of Physical Strength. But at the moment, everyone's base stats were only between 20-50. Two points didn't seem like much, but sometimes, that small difference could be what kept you alive.
Besides, if 2 points weren't enough, they could just drink another bottle!
In an instant, the chat was flooded with people looking to buy coffee. There was an endless stream of users tagging Miss Black Tights, hoping she would list more.
Renee Kane even saw a few familiar IDs who had just bought six or seven bottles of coffee from her, then immediately turned around and started hawking them in the chat hall as "secondhand coffee" for 100 Life Value a bottle!
She was so mad she had to laugh.
'I was already seeing red because I didn't make a bigger profit, and now they dare to mock me by reselling it for several times the price right in front of my face, huh?'
'Then I'll show you just who controls the market!'
Renee Kane quickly blocked those few people, then immediately listed another hundred bottles of instant coffee, selling them for only 50 Life Value each!
Next, she listed a hundred boxes of powdered instant coffee—the kind you brew. Each box contained 10 packets, priced at 25 Life Value per packet or 200 Life Value for a whole box. 'Go on and buy it.'
Her main principle was: 'I can earn less, but you won't earn a thing.'
With such an ample supply flowing into the market, people naturally stopped paying attention to the scalpers.
And surprisingly, the coffee powder sold even better than the bottled instant coffee.
Because people discovered that, for the same effect, the coffee powder used less water...
In any case, thanks to the "Physical Strength coffee," Renee Kane's Life Value shot past twenty thousand!
Looking at the zeroes after her Life Value, it was hard not to feel a sense of bliss, especially when compared to the tragic fate of her past life.
But Renee Kane didn't let herself drown in this satisfaction. She knew that having a high Life Value only meant she was durable.
But with only defense and no offense, she still couldn't guarantee her survival against the dangerous creatures out there.
'This is all just the beginning,' she thought. 'I absolutely cannot let this momentary comfort cloud my judgment.'
Just as she was preparing to go back to fishing for chests in the magma, she suddenly received a new message.
It was for Brute Force.